Greatest Civilization in the World - Hurt or Heal?

[Zkribbler]

70 - Rome -2
70 - Greece +2
74 - China

[Kataphraktoi]

Why ask polls when you already know the answer?

[Theben]

I'd prefer -50 pts. for each civ... get this over with faster. Until then-

72 - Rome +2
70 - Greece
72 - China -2

[GePap]

70 - Rome -2
70 - Greece
74 - China+2

Now that we have gotten to three, just change it to a single choice poll and be done with it.

Also, Down with Rome....if you want a classical civ, go with the Greeks, who actually thought it up.

[thesilentone]

70 - Rome
68 - Greece -2
76 - China +2

The problem with Greece is that whilst they came up with many great ideas, they never ruled an empire. Ok, Alexander you say, but he was an outsider - a very greek outsider maybe but Macedonia was still thought to be a wild a woolly kind of place back then. And even if we count him, the nature of his empire lead to it's instant division on his death. A successful civilization has to have a strong line of succession. Rome certainly had it's problems with it, but successors were chosen and agreed upon many times leading to long periods of strength and prosperity. China had many long periods of stability and has the longest contiguous history of any in this poll (even from the full shortlist at the beginning) and is arguably the only right choice for this contest.

The only thing that would put Rome higher than China in my opinion is that they ruled many different peoples and somehow managed to make them all feel Roman. My history of China isn't as strong but I get the impression they had a considerable advantage in that their population is very homogenous.

As an Atheist, I'd also like to give China a bonus point for not having their civ subverted by a religion in the way Rome and Greece became dominated and directed by hardcore christianity.

[Aeson]

68 - Rome --
68 - Greece
78 - China ++

[DAVOUT]

68 - Rome --
*70 - Greece ++
*76 - China --

Considering the initial ambiguity of the question. I am only interested in the way we arrive at the result, not in the result by itself.

[Wernazuma III]

70 - Rome ++
68 - Greece --
76 - China

[BeBMan]

70 - Rome
70 - Greece ++
74 - China --

[molly bloom]

68 - Rome -
72 - Greece +
74 - China

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by thesilentone
The problem with Greece is that whilst they came up with many great ideas, they never ruled an empire. Ok, Alexander you say, but he was an outsider - a very greek outsider maybe but Macedonia was still thought to be a wild a woolly kind of place back then. And even if we count him, the nature of his empire lead to it's instant division on his death. A successful civilization has to have a strong line of succession. Rome certainly had it's problems with it, but successors were chosen and agreed upon many times leading to long periods of strength and prosperity. China had many long periods of stability and has the longest contiguous history of any in this poll (even from the full shortlist at the beginning) and is arguably the only right choice for this contest.

I don't agree with your points defining the "greatness" of a civ. I think Dauphin's earlier post made a much better case.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Harry Tuttle


Rome celebrated civilization. Egypt celebrated the dead.

Rome celebrated the dead by deifying them, occasionally also doing this while people were still alive- much like the Pharaonic cult of the godking....

Rome also bastardized an Etruscan rite to commemorate and pacify the dead into a savage spectator sport.

The fact is that the Egyptian empire barely extended past its immediate boundaries

Not really much point in extending into uninhabited desert...

Egypt did at various times expand into the Sinai, Nubia and Palestine. All empires ebb and flow, depending on the mettle of their leaders, climatic changes, epidemics, invasions, et cetera.

and left us with monuments rather than an "idea" of what constitutes modern day civilization.

Like a city based state ? With granaries, public spaces, marketplaces, temples, docks...

Cities such as Memphis, Thebes, Pi-Ramesses...

The problem with Greece is that whilst they came up with many great ideas, they never ruled an empire.

Not strictly true. The Athenians had a maritime empire, and the individual Greek city states expanded across the Mediterranean as far as Spain and southern France, and into the Caucasus and Crimea.

Southern Italy was known as Magna Graecia...

In any case, the Seleucid and Ptolemaic successor states to Alexander's empire were ruled by an Hellenic elite, with Greek populations in places such as Antioch, Alexandria, Ptolemais, Antinoopolis...

A successful civilization has to have a strong line of succession.

Why ? Greek civilization has outlived any ruling family or individual Hellenic state or empire- the Romans never produced anyone to match Sophocles, Homer or Aristotle.

And they had the Greek model to work from...

[onodera]

66 - Rome --
72 - Greece
76 - China ++

[Kataphraktoi]

The selucid empire, among other greek descendent empires, kept going for quite a while.

[General Ludd]

64 - Rome
72 - Greece
76 - China